Medici - Episode Guide

After 20 years of grooming, Cosimo Medici replaces his late father in Florence's Signoria, where he must decide whether to support a call for war.

As the war with Milan takes a heavy toll on Florence, Cosimo boosts morale and the economy by undertaking the impossible: building the cathedral dome.

While Albizzi uses the plague to turn Florentines against Cosimo and his dome, two Medici family members are lost. Marco forces a shocking confession.

After Cosimo's arrest, his wife tries to buy a Signoria member's help. Piero seeks to refute the charges, whilst Lorenzo takes a more drastic approach.

In exile in Venice, Cosimo finds himself drawn to a slave woman. Meanwhile, back in Florence, Contessina runs into her childhood sweetheart.

The Medici family returns to Florence, where Albizzi awaits the Signoria's sentence, but the arrival of Pope Eugene IV complicates the situation.

Cosimo is asked to choose a candidate for the vacant seat in the Signoria. Marco is forced to share his suspicions about Lorenzo with Cosimo.

Contessina is faced with deciding Maddalena's fate. Cosimo goes to Rome to retake the city and the papacy. Lorenzo finds evidence incriminating Pazzi.

After a surprise attack, Lorenzo and Giuliano search for the culprits. The trail leads the brothers to the Pazzis, but treachery lies closer at hand.

Lorenzo's power play comes at a cost and stirs up outrage. With leadership comes sacrifice as he travels to Rome and weighs an advantageous match.

The death of the pope brings strategic challenges as Lorenzo negotiates with the Duke of Milan and welcomes his new bride, Clarice, to Florence.

Lorenzo aims to strengthen ties with the Pazzis and proposes a treaty with Venice. Clarice appeals to Lucrezia and learns the way to Lorenzo's heart.

In opposition to the pope, Lorenzo moves quickly to acquire the strategic city of Imola. A forbidden love flowers between Giuliano and Simonetta.

The papal army advances as important coalitions shift. Meanwhile, Lorenzo negotiates a crucial treaty, and Jacopo attempts a major power grab.

As forces threaten a fragile alliance, the Pazzis embark on a murderous plan to destroy the Medicis while Lorenzo seeks to make peace with Rome.

The day of reckoning arrives as the circle of conspirators tightens around the Medicis during Mass, and rivals attempt to take control of Florence.

A few months after the Pazzi Conspiracy, Lorenzo is still animated by a spirit of revenge. There is a distance clash (to the sound of excommunications) between Lorenzo and Pope Sixtus IV; the cruel count Riario (the last of the conspirators left alive) tries to take advantage of this conflict, trying to start the war between Florence and Rome. While the Medici family learns of the existence of Giulio, the illegitimate son of the late Giuliano, a Dominican friar arrives in Florence who seems capable of reading in Lorenzo's heart: Girolamo Savonarola.

The entry into the field of the Kingdom of Naples alongside the papal troops is likely to mark the end of Florence. Among the Priors there are those who doubt Lorenzo, but the Magnificent, determined not to let Florence fall into the hands of his enemies, finds a stratagem to de-authorize the Priors by replacing them with the Council of Ten, made up of men loyal to him. When Clarice, pregnant, is sent to the countryside with the children, the family suffers an attack by the men of Riario. Faced with the approach of the military threat to the city, Lorenzo decides to leave for Naples with his new adviser Bruno Bernardi, to try to break the encirclement and restore peace.